Tuesday, May 20, 2014
Are We Really a Democracy?
On April 9, Marten Gilens, a political professor at Princeton University, and Benjamin Page, a political science professor at Northwestern, released a report that declared the United States an Oligarchy, as opposed to a democracy. The report is entitled "Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens" and can be found here. According to the report, the American majority has little influence whatsoever. The report states that "that if policy making is dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America’s claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened."
Their studies show that Corporate America, meaning the large independent businesses, have a substantial impact on American Policy, while the public opinion has little to no impact on the outcome of the government policy. They back this up with evidence from reviewing the answers from 1779 survey questions and broke down the results based on income level, and then compared the income level with how satisfied they were with how their views were being enacted in public policy. The results showed that "A proposed policy change with low support among economically elite Americans (one-out-of-five in favour) is adopted only about 18% of the time," they write, "while a proposed change with high support (four-out-of-five in favour) is adopted about 45% of the time." In other words, the lower income survey takers were prominently less satisfied with the way the government was being run.
In conclusion, while every American can benefit from the merits of a government that resembles a democratic system such as participation in regular elections and freedom of speech, the fact that policy making is dominated by wealthy business and corporations shows that America is more of an Oligarchy rather than a democracy. I personally found this information to be alarming, and it made me question whether or not we really are a Democracy or not.
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I think this is a really interesting idea. It comes as an affront to our "American" ideals of 'majority rule' and 'representative government.' It also parallels back to the Hamiltonian/Jeffersonian democracy debate. It seems today we have taken the path of Hamilton.
ReplyDeleteInteresting post. It makes me wonder if that has always been the case or if this tendency to cater to the elite/corporations started post-Civil War when Big Businesses really took off.
ReplyDeleteThis is a great post, Thomas! Something that might interest you is a group called Wolf-Pac. They are a group of journalists and other activists who are working to get money out of politics, and their goal is to get this started on a state level. Check it out: http://www.wolf-pac.com/
ReplyDeleteInteresting post, Thomas! I've always thought of oligarchies as what existed during the Italian Renaissance, when a few families did completely control the wealth and run the city. It's odd to think of the United States being anything like that, because we generally like to think of the U.S. as a Democratic nation. Going off Perla's comment, I think it's interesting to look at when this really became true in American History. The gap between the rich and poor has certainly widened as the "We are the 99%" movement demonstrates, but when did this wage gap begin? Perhaps that will give us a deeper insight into how much of an oligarchy the U.S. really is.
ReplyDeleteGreat post! I've definitely heard some pretty shocking statistics before about things like the wealth gap, as Sitara was saying, but it's cool to see that same idea put into a historical and political context.
ReplyDeleteI think that it is hard to balance out democracy. The government might be used by the mob to persecute a minority like in WWII with the Japanese Americans, or the government could be used by a loud minority to suppress the masses like in Prohibition. If we look at today, I think that there is definitely a large number of people who believe that the government is practically run by a small group. This opinion was demonstrated in the Occupy Movements. On the other hand there are times when we can see the hand of the masses playing.
ReplyDeleteWhen examining any government it is important to remember that we have to filter reality and idealism. In an ideal situation the US would represent 100% of the American population equally. but the problem with this is that it is hard to treat people equally when they are not actually equal. essentially we are all equal when you get down too it, but politics doesn't care about our hearts and souls, they care about cash and well cash. Im not saying this is a good thing, in fact I think it is very disturbing the way in which our society has become so materialistic, but I do not think it is fair to say the US is an oligarchy. The facts presented in the post above actually disprove the argument of a non democratic America because if policies not supported by corporate are still passed then there is still representation. While it may not be equal and it may not be faire, there is little in the world that truly is, and in order to have a functioning government sacrifices sometimes have to be made.
ReplyDeleteIn addition, these facts are presented without context. How much American legislation is supported by corporate? If the majority of legislation is supported by corporate it is no surprise that it has a higher pass rate, there are more actually bills to pass. Likewise what are the bills not supported by corporate that are not being passed? Are they extremely left wing or right wing policies? Or are they religiously affiliated? As we have seen in history class this year there is often a lot more to a story than meets the eye, and it is always wise to ask questions.